What teachers need to know about Snapchat
I’m hearing and reading a lot of warnings about the popular messaging app Snapchat, most based on the misperception that it is primarily a sexting app. While Snapchat can certainly be used for this purpose (as can text messages, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and any tool that allows us to send and receive pictures and text), it’s time for some myth-busting around what we think we know about Snapchat.
Rather than buy into the sensationalist and alarmist warnings at face value, find some actual Snapchat users and try to validate the assumptions. If you do, you’re likely to learn that the assumptions can’t be validated.
Take Jason, a middle school Special Education Teacher I know who uses Snapchat. When I asked him about why and how he uses the service, he said that he only uses it with his wife and close friends and that most of his pictures are of the dinner he is cooking that night. As a proud foodie, he likes to show off his magazine quality meals. As someone whose phone is constantly running out of memory, Snapchat makes sense for meeting his needs.
“The photos aren’t stored on my phone so I don’t have to waste time going through my camera roll to delete them. I send the pics, my wife sees them, and they disappear. It’s perfect.”
My girlfriend uses Snapchat as her primary communication tool with her friends. Like Jason, she also cites the memory space issue as a reason for using it and adds that it’s a quicker way to share a picture or video with a group than text messaging. It simply takes fewer clicks. And with friends in other countries, it eliminates the communication hurdles that come with international data charges. [I can also attest that in two years she has neglected to take advantage of the supposed sexting feature a single time.]
Beyond refuting the misperception of why people use Snapchat, there are a number of important reasons why educators should be thinking about this tool as a way to powerfully impact teaching and learning.
Social Media Training Wheels
Most Digital Citizenship lessons and units are full of cautionary tales for our learners. We tell students what not to do and share case studies of social media blunders in the hope that they will be more careful.
Imagine if as part of our curriculum — before young people had a chance to make these mistakes on emails and text messages — we could give them access to a tool that allows them to practice in an authentic environment that has all of the features of the real thing except that the messages weren’t saved. Wouldn’t such “training wheels” be a great service? This is exactly what Snapchat does!
While this feature of Mission Impossible-style self-destructing messages is what led to Snapchat’s sexting reputation, it’s also the most compelling reason for us to be using it in schools as a way to teach smart citizenship. It’s a safer place to fail because it lacks permanence. Unlike a faux pas on other mediums that could live forever on the web and haunt for years or even the rest of students’ lives, Snapchat could be used in a manner that lets kids learn from mistakes without the everlasting suffering.
Everything is a Remix
The “Everything is a Remix” mentality is popular for a reason. Uptexting and adding context to video and images is an important skill. There are a lot people establishing big reputations and making a great living by producing images that go beyond the image. Think of George Takei. Think of the Humans of New York project.
Snapchat allows users to add stamps to their images. It allows users to add text. Perhaps most popular, it allows users to draw on top of images in multiple colors. The speed and ease with which Snapchat allows these remixing options, without the need to engage in app smashing or running it through time-consuming editing apps, make it a no brainer for millions of users, young and old. If our students already find the app engaging, why not leverage that and use it to teach high level skills with transfer to Real World tasks?
High Level Skills with Transfer to Real World Tasks
Arguments against Snapchat having transfer to Real World tasks don’t hold water. Your favorite team is on Snapchat. The channels and shows you watch are there or soon will be. Disneyland and the most famous museums are seizing on this medium to engage visitors and as money flows to this space, jobs are following.
With a nascent tool like this, age is a non-factor in determining expertise. Our students could legitimately be the smartest and most experienced people in the room of an employer looking to leverage Snapchat. Early adopters are establishing reputations and using them to get lucrative work. People like Shaun McBride aren’t just documenting events; they are using Snapchat to document events in ways that help their followers feel like they are there with them. Brands are seizing this medium to connect with consumers by creating a sense of exclusivity, connection and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
For schools and educators, the FOMO with Snapchat is more than a fear. Ignoring or dismissing this tool for the wrong reasons is opting into truly missing out on a great opportunity to teach our students and prepare them for their futures.
If you’re looking for a safe SnapChat sandbox, you can find me, Noah Geisel, by searching for user puravidanoah. Looking forward to connecting!
